The Post-Gazette Closure is a Major Loss. Storytelling Has Become Even More Essential.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will cease operations in May.
That sentence is hard to write, harder to read, and harder still to grasp. As a native son of southwestern Pennsylvania, growing up just outside the city, this one’s personal.
It’s also all too familiar.
The Pittsburgh Press, an afternoon daily that itself published for more than a century, shuttered in May 1992. That loss was a blow.
But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette?
It’s been sharing stories of the people of southwestern Pennsylvania since the pioneer days, dating back to 1786. For centuries, whatever happened in Pittsburgh, there was a daily paper recording it all — until now.
Newspapers are fundamental to our understanding of the world around us. Who pulls the levers of power. How council voted. Why a school closure hurt. Who are my neighbors and what do they do. What businesses opened or closed. Why did my favorite sports team collapse — again.
The deep analysis that newspapers provide is gone — and it’s a major loss for the region.
But let’s be clear: While the city may soon be a bit quieter, it hasn’t lost its voice. Storytellers tend to keep telling stories. And at its core, that’s what this is about.
The economics of print journalism have been in a long decline. Newsrooms everywhere have been hollowed out.
This week, LNP | LancasterOnline announced a 9% staff reduction ahead of its formal transfer from current owner Pennon to a new nonprofit.
Lost are the writers, editors, photographers and production staff who showed up daily to document for us what life looks like in our community.
As traditional print news declines, telling our own stories becomes even more important — not just in Pittsburgh, but across the state. That instinct to share and connect doesn’t disappear — and it hasn’t gone away.
Now more than ever, it’s up to government agencies, businesses, universities, community groups, nonprofits and others to chronicle the work, the progress, the people and the institutions that drive and inspire us.
They may do it in different places, on different platforms, and with different voices, but the stories need to be told.
Readers will still scroll and search and skim for their news. But more than anything, they will still want a story — something that connects them, that gives them a sense of place, that helps them understand not just what happened, but what it means.
That responsibility falls to us.
The loss of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette doesn’t mean staying quiet. It means endeavoring even more to tell the stories that connect us with the community around us.
